Crimson Desert and Switch 2 Pokémon: are they worth the price?

There were two games I wanted to play so badly I was watching trailers at 1 a.m. and convincing myself I deserved nice things. One was a new Pokémon game on the Nintendo Switch 2. The other was Crimson Desert, from developer Pearl Abyss. I bought neither, and that's because of how much modern games cost and how little that money guarantees.

This is less polished than usual. It's a vent, a good old-fashioned moan about games, because I think modern games have become a luxury item. They're not just entertainment anymore. They're a financial decision that needs budgeting, possibly a spreadsheet, maybe a small loan approved by the Jedi Council.

Why retro gaming feels affordable when new games don't

Part of why I love retro gaming is the nostalgia. Injecting pure childhood into my veins is part of the appeal. But the other part is that I can afford it without remortgaging my house or selling a kidney on the black market.

The obvious answer to my problem is to buy the games. It's a beautifully simple solution, much like telling someone to just pop off to Mordor. The trouble is what that actually costs, and whether what you get is worth it.

The Pokémon game that needs a Nintendo Switch 2

I already own a Nintendo Switch. It's a perfectly good, functioning console. It still turns on, it still plays games, and it still brings me joy. Breath of the Wild is sitting there at my fingertips whenever I like.

That isn't enough anymore. In what I can only describe as a move worthy of a chaotic neutral alignment, Nintendo released a really cool Pokémon game with a big open map that looks great, and then made it playable only on the Switch 2. I think that feels slightly mean.

So off I went like a hopeful little hobbit to check the damage. The Nintendo Switch 2 was 385.99 pounds, and that's just the console, the entry fee to the dungeon. The game itself was 58.99 pounds. That puts me at roughly 440 pounds to play one game. For that price, I expect a personal companion, full voice acting by Ian McKellen, and a side quest that fixes my life.

How Crimson Desert reviews killed my hype

Crimson Desert hurt more, because it's my kind of game. It's an open world, third person RPG with big fantasy vibes. It's the sort of game where you tell yourself this is the one you'll sink 200 hours into while ignoring all responsibilities. I've seen shorts of it on my social media feed, and it looks like a game I would personally love: horses, swords, dragons, sweeping landscapes.

I was ready. I was mentally prepared to drop 50 to 60 pounds on it. I had it justified, and I'd accepted my fate. Then I saw the reviews. Suddenly it felt like ordering a legendary weapon and realizing you might have ordered a slightly damp stick.

On paper it's perfect for me, but at 60 pounds I'm not guaranteed a masterpiece. It's not polished beyond doubt, and it hasn't landed very well with the community. I understand anyone saying I should just not buy it. It's probably not worth that level of uncertainty, especially when there's a genuine chance it plays like a next gen epic but runs like it's powered by a hamster on annual leave.

Paying full price for a game now feels like a gamble

How do you spend 60 pounds of real adult money on something with no guarantee it's worth it? Back in the day, you took a punt on a game and the worst case was losing 30 pounds and a bit of dignity. Now it feels like being asked whether you'd like to gamble 60 pounds on a masterpiece or a broken mess held together with hope and patch notes.

I understand games are getting more expensive, and that's fine. Bigger worlds, bigger teams, more detail, more dragons per square mile. I get it. The issue I'm constantly battling is whether they're worth it. I don't mean that in a dramatic "gaming is dead" way. I mean I looked at my bank account and quietly closed the screen, because everything is expensive right now.

Every purchase has to be justified. It feels less like buying a game and more like signing a contract. You need guarantees, reviews, at least three people you trust, a Reddit thread and possibly a prophecy from an ancient Warhammer tome. It feels like a cursed D20 roll where anything below 15 means you've spent 60 pounds on something half finished, slightly broken and being fixed in a future update. It's early access disguised as a full release.

Game pricing feels disconnected from reality

I've seen plenty of reels of people at conventions saying things like "your wallet's not going to thank you for this" or "prepare your wallet now." It's meant to be funny, but I'm not sure I find it funny. It's quite depressing, and it annoys me. Buying games is now a strategic decision. Is this worth 60 pounds? Will I actually play it? Will it run properly?

I think the pricing of modern games feels completely disconnected from reality. The industry is up there living its best life in some high fantasy capital city, Minas Tirith or Coruscant, take your pick. The rest of us are down on Tatooine trying to work out whether we can afford both a game and electricity this month.

It's definitely not worth the risk for people outside the comfortable bubble of high income gamers who seem to be everywhere, the ones who can afford to roll the dice and shrug it off.

Gaming used to be an escape

When money is tight, the gamble stops being exciting and becomes stressful. You start hesitating over games you genuinely want to play. It's not because you're uninterested. You just can't financially justify the risk, which is mad when you think about it.

Gaming used to be the thing you did to forget that real life was expensive and chaotic. Now gaming itself has joined the list of things you have to think twice about. It's gone from pick up and play to a financial side quest with emotional consequences. I don't think the industry fully realizes how many people it's quietly leaving behind when it does that, me included.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Destiny show what value looks like

I'm not against paying for games. I'm not some level 100 final boss hoarding gold. If a game delivers, I will happily play it, and I'm looking at you, Baldur's Gate 3.

Destiny is my other example. I was properly deep into it, the kind of deep where a quick session turns into 3 a.m. and negotiating raid mechanics with strangers. Destiny formed my lockdown, when time stopped meaning anything and my social life was essentially a fireteam. At the time it made sense, and I could justify it because it had value. Not the "it might be good after six patches and a community apology" kind of value, but actual hours, actual enjoyment and an actual reason to come back.

Why I struggled with Arc Raiders and paid multiplayer games

That's part of why I struggled when I bought Arc Raiders. From reviews I've read, people have had similar issues with Marathon. This might be me showing my age, and I haven't played many multiplayer games, so potentially that's where I'm going wrong. Maybe I'm comparing them to a golden era of multiplayer around 2010 to 2012, or holding on too much to my Destiny lockdown nostalgia.

Still, multiplayer games behind a paywall feel like they've been designed by people who have never experienced the miserable feeling of being the only person in a matchmaking queue. Maybe I'm playing at the wrong time. I'm not 16 anymore, and I don't have a squad permanently on standby. My team is basically whoever's online, and I'm not sure I like it.

Multiplayer games live off player numbers. That's the engine. No players, no game. A single player RPG is different: worst case, I can wander off, ignore the main quest and get emotionally attached to side characters for 40 hours. I've got used to multiplayer, but I've struggled hard with Arc Raiders.

I'm under no illusions that I'm going to single handedly change the industry. I think I've had a mild existential crisis over game prices, and I want to play these games. I just don't want to feel like I've been mugged off by a side quest.